Former bantamweight champ Alajamain Sterling is now officially a featherweight fighter. However, the class weight recently faced a major change after Ilia Topuria was crowned as the new champ. With this, Sterling knows that stealing the belt in this new division won’t be easy for him.
Sterling will make his featherweight debut against Calvin Kattar at UFC 300 on April 13. The shift in the division happened after the “Funk Master” lost the belt to Sean O’Malley. However, before he made the decision, Alexander Volkanovski was still reigning the division. Then, a huge change happened when “El Matador” stole the gold from the Australian fighter at UFC 298.
With this, Sterling knows that the division that he entered is no longer the one he expected when he made the jump. And by assessing the new champ, the 34-year-old has to admit that he will be a tough fight.
“I think he (Topuria) could be champ for quite some time if he wants to. That’s a hard style of fight. I mean, what do you do?” Sterling said on the recent episode of his The Weekly Scraps podcast. Ilia can actually wrestle… It’s a tough matchup for anybody. Even for me, if I had the opportunity to fight him.”
Currently, Topuria is eying Conor McGregor, noting that he’s not interested in the top contenders of his division and that he wants some new faces. For Sterling, he’s one of the new ones who might interest the champ, but in the end, he knows that this fight would be a huge challenge.
“Say I finish Calvin Kattar, make a big statement, they want something new, want something fresh, the Brian Ortega/Yair (Rodríguez) fight isn’t that great; maybe they throw me in there,” Sterling added. “I’m looking at it like, I got my work cut out for me. That’s not an easy fight. That’s just being as honest as it is. I know I can punch, but it’s not how hard you can hit. Sometimes you’ve gotta be able to take that back.”
